Ok so I'm looking for a good router that i can use to both print with and plug in my usb hard drive to use as a time machine backup. so i will need one compatible with bonjour. I was going for a Belkin, but then heard they couldnt do bonjour support so that's out. airport extreme costs way too much, especially for a having only 3 ethernet ports. (why 3? stupid.)

Check the specs again - they both have 2 USB ports. Since you are posting here is it safe to assume that you plan on putting Tomato USB on your new router? In that case I don't believe the RT-N56U is supported yet.

well i was thinking about tomato but idk enough about it yet. I don't know what RT-N56U is, i'm not quite that tech savvy sorry. I don't mind if the file transferring is slow, its just going to be used for time machine which runs in the background so I won't be paying attention to it.

RT-N56U is the model number of one of the routers you linked to above (the black futuristic looking one). That model is NOT compatible with Tomato; if you bought that router you would be using it as it comes from the factory.

The other router you linked to above is the ASUS RT-N16. It supports Tomato and I think you will find it is one of the most popular routers among the people on this site.

As routers go, the RT-N16 is, a _beast_ in comparison to the other routers that I've owned. (there may be a few that are comparable to it…)

If you are going to use _any_ router as a backup device, be realistic about it. It won't give you more than 10MB/sec read, about 8MB/sec write - absolute tops. If you use it for TimeMachine backups, your first sync may as well be wired (rather than wireless), and it will take a while. Subsequent airpot backups are , as you know, incremental and will prolly take much less time.

I do use mine as an TimeCapsule equivalent, but I also have several other low-watt NAS's running for rsyncing my stuff to.

but I also have several other low-watt NAS's running for rsyncing my stuff to.

Davy,
Thankyou, Thankyou, Thankyou !!

I've been trying to justify to myself getting a NAS box when I already have a perfectly good (spare made out of scavenged parts) desktop running Ubuntu running as a RAID-5 NAS. Only thing is, the backups are not automatic, and I hate to have it running all the time sucking power, so it shuts off after 20 minutes of idle and we have to run a WOL script to wake it up when we want to use it. Try explaining to your wife whywhenever she wants to run Picasa to work with her vacation picturesshe has to click on the "wake_up_igor" icon and then wait 2 minutes. ;-(

But, ah!!…. A small, low-power NAS sitting on the bookshelf next to the router and DSL modem, all powered up 24/7, with the RAID-5 PC sitting in the basement waking up once a week to do a 2nd level backup………beautiful idea. Wouldn't even need a UPS on the Linux PC. Wouldn't even need to have it do a BIOS-timed wakeup, WOL would do just fine.

Now I just have to decide which NAS box would be the best buy. Any informed recommendations or suggestions?
I'm now thinking maybe a single-disk NAS might do just fine. Maybe with a cheap 5400 RPM 2TB Samsung drive? Or maybe move 1 or 2 of my WD Black 750GB drives to the NAS and put 5400rpm drive(s) on the PC?

Best speed comes out of the units that have SATA connection to the hdd's - not via USB. (think NSLU2 - old school, very cool/retro, but still old school).

The newer Marvell ARM9 based units are probably supported by the vanilla kernel - don't know if you are willing to go through the whole thing of debootstrapping and mixing up your own image, or whether you want to go the stock firmware route. If you are Linux-comfortable, and don't mind fiddling under the hood, there is stuff like this: http://www.cyrius.com/debian/kirkwood/

The ARM9 kirkwood runs at 800MHz to 1.6GHz… I'm sure there are other boxes that can be opened up…
QNAP isn't the only one… the LinkStationwiki may have some articles on these newer boxes that talk about "debootstrapping" to get optware or debian on it… and still keep the stock firmware running.

I splurged for a Thecus N4100PRO with 4x Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS 2TB drives. The user forum is full of horror stories and support is lacking but a person with you expertise shouldn't have a problem with it, I sure don't. I also added a 1x CORSAIR VS1GSDS400 memory upgrade.